Chip-card-based electronic access protection systems for computer systems are known. In particular, the practice of granting access to a computer system or similar device only when a password that is input by a user, for example, what is known as a personal identification number (PIN), has been successfully verified by a data processing apparatus of the chip card is known.
If electronic access protection needs to be executed when a computer system is actually started, the problem arises that a firmware component used for starting such as particularly a BIOS program of a computer system, needs to be set up for data interchange with the chip card reader or a chip card inserted into the chip card reader. This results in relatively high complexity for the firmware component.
The complexity of the firmware component increases further still if not just one but rather different chip card types with different access procedures need to be used to implement the access protection. In practice, a multiplicity of different chip card types with different access procedures specific to the respective chip card have become established. Conditioning a firmware component to a plurality of or even all the chip card types and access procedures on the market is usually not possible or very cost- and error-intensive in practice for reasons of the limited storage capacity of the firmware component or the time involvement required for producing conditioned firmware code.
It could therefore be helpful to provide a simple and at the same time flexible electronic access protection system for a computer system or the like and the components required therefor and suitable methods of operation.